Patrick O'Donovan (Limerick County, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The first thing that the Government wanted to do for everyone who had any interaction with a financial institution was to protect his or her income, albeit not in the same way as happened in Northern Ireland, which Deputy Ó Murchú might be more familiar with than most of the Deputies present. Our Government has protected in excess of 1.3 million people through the PUP and what is now the emergency wage subsidy scheme.

Deputy Boyd Barrett might claim that Government policy is to sit back and do nothing, but the Government has in recent months done everything in its power, and gone beyond what most EU countries have done, to protect people's incomes in the first instance and then their jobs. In protecting their jobs, we are protecting their ability to make all of the payments within their scope, in particular their day-to-day living expenses. Perhaps the other jurisdiction on this island could learn a great deal from what has happened on this side of the Border. If Deputy Ó Murchú has any correspondence with the North, he might pass on what the Government in the South has done.

Deputy Mattie McGrath is right about the stresses that people are under. That is why the Tánaiste and the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform have engaged not only in the past week, but on a continuous basis through their departmental officials, with the CEO of every bank.

Deputy Boyd Barrett might choose not to recognise it, but we need a functioning banking sector in order to have a functioning business sector. He might want to nationalise them all and turn them into some sort of Cuban bank, but that does not work anywhere in the world in real terms except in North Korea and Cuba.

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